Mayors, MNAs, MPs form caucus to press for Cavendish link

By Joel Goldenberg
The Suburban

A “Cavendish caucus” of Mayors, MPs and MNAs has been created and met virtually with federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser to press for the realization of the Cavendish link between CSL and St. Laurent before the Hippodrome housing project is completed.

The caucus includes Mayors Mitchell Brownstein (CSL),  Peter Malouf (TMR), Alan DeSousa (St. Laurent) and Jeremy Levi (Hampstead). It also includes MPs Anthony Housefather, Anna Gainey and Emmanuella Lambropoulos; MNAs Elisabeth Prass, Desirée McGraw and Michelle Setlakwe and councillors Dida Berku and Sonny Moroz.

Lambropoulos said she and the other members of the Cavendish Caucus are requesting that the “Province of Quebec enforce the terms of its agreement with the City of Montreal which mandated the completion of the Cavendish project in return for ceding the Hippodrome land to Montreal.”

“We pressed upon [Fraser] that’s it’s very important that the federal government, which has billions of dollars to give for housing, as well as the provincial government, not give money for housing without demanding that the transport be there in order to service that housing — not to finance the housing without the transport,” Berku said. “Without the support of the federal and provincial governments, Montreal won’t be able to [go ahead with] these plans….We recognize the housing needs, but we need good transit to fuel and promote good development.”

A National Assembly petition sponsored by Prass asking for the realization of the Cavendish link is being launched.

The petition, specifically, will also ask the provincial government to “respect and enforce the Hippodrome agreement of 2017, which stipulated that the transfer was conditional on the realization of the Cavendish extension.”

A letter from the caucus to Fraser also says they are asking “for an environmental impact study to be done immediately so that it can be brought before the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE) as soon as possible, and for the Cavendish extension to be developed in parallel to the Namur-Hippodrome housing project, as it was meant to be.”

Mayor Mitchell Brownstein said the business community is clear that the Cavendish link has to accompany the housing development. “For residents to want to move into those developments, for businesses to succeed — people need to be able to get there.”

Neil Oberman, the new Conservative Mount Royal candidate and a former CSL municipal candidate, told The Suburban he is supportive of this effort.

“Cavendish needs to be open, its a question of people having a right to circulate, to go see their families without getting stuck in traffic. It’s been long overdue, it needs to be done, it shall be done because people won’t accept being locked in their homes and blocked in their cities.”

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